Retracted Publications in the Biomedical Literature from Open Access Journals

Science and Engineering Ethics - The number of articles published in open access journals (OAJs) has increased dramatically in recent years. Simultaneously, the quality of publications in these...     

Correctable Myths About Research Misconduct in the Biomedical Sciences

Science and Engineering Ethics - A recent National Academy report on research integrity noted that policies are not evidence-based, with no formal entity responsible to attend to this deficit. Here...     

警惕迷信宣传品的新动向

信一:说明书中夹带的迷信宣传品 　　科学与无神论编辑部: 　　我是国家机关一名退休职工,前不久在本市一家挺信得过的药店买了一盒&;#215;&;#215;宝(按:妇科保健药品).心想,就凭这家药店的名声,相信不会出什么问题.打开药盒,和说明书放在一起的,是一张宣传品.那宣传品上,印的是十二生肖和人的性格、婚姻、工作以及命运的关系.谁都知道,这已经是上千年以前的迷信了,这些年又有所抬头,但却想不到它会被夹在药品中推销.生肖只有十二个,中国人却有十几亿,差不多一个生肖都有一亿人,难道他们的性格、命运都一样吗?我不知这家药厂是怎么想的,这样做对他们药品的销售有什么好处?……     

生命科学中的"扮演上帝":合理性与责任性

"扮演上帝"是一个主要用来描述生命科学及生物技术发展并对其进行社会评价的习语.在生存与发展意义上,人类有充分的理由去扮演上帝.随着越来越多的生命秘密被揭示,人类获得了越来越多的似神力量.人类应该扮演上帝,人类能够扮演上帝,人类不得不去扮演上帝,扮演上帝已成为人类的宿命.基于自然界和生命世界的复杂性以及知识的有限性,人们在扮演上帝时要有更多的耐心和责任.     

Field and Experience Influences on Ethical Decision Making in the Sciences

Differences across fields and experience levels are frequently considered in discussions of ethical decision making and ethical behavior. In the present study, doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences completed measures of ethical decision making. The effects of field and level of experience with respect to ethical decision making, metacognitive reasoning strategies, social-behavioral responses, and exposure to unethical events were examined. Social and biological scientists performed better than health scientists with respect to ethical decision making. Furthermore, the ethical decision making of health science students decreased as experience increased. Moreover, these effects appeared to be linked to the specific strategies underlying participants' ethical decision making. The implications of these findings for ethical decision making are discussed.     

Perpetuation of Retracted Publications Using the Example of the Scott S. Reuben Case: Incidences,Reasons and Possible Improvements

In 2009, Scott S. Reuben was convicted of fabricating data, which lead to 25 of his publications being retracted. Although it is clear that the perpetuation of retracted articles negatively effects the appraisal of evidence, the extent to which retracted literature is cited had not previously been investigated. In this study, to better understand the perpetuation of discredited research, we examine the number of citations of Reuben’s articles within 5 years of their retraction. Citations of Reuben’s retracted articles were assessed using the Web of Science Core Collection (Thomson Reuters, NY). All citing articles were screened to discriminate between articles in which Reuben’s work was quoted as retracted, and articles in which his data was wrongly cited without any note of the retraction status. Twenty of Reuben’s publications had been cited 274 times between 2009 and 1024. In 2014, 45 % of the retracted articles had been cited at least once. In only 25.8 % of citing articles was it clearly stated that Reuben’s work had been retracted. Annual citations decreased from 108 in 2009 to 18 in 2014; however, the percentage of publications correctly indicating the retraction status also declined. The percentage of citations in top-25 %-journals, as well as the percentage of citations in journals from Reuben’s research area, declined sharply after 2009. Our data show that even 5 years after their retraction, nearly half of Reuben’s articles are still being quoted and the retraction status is correctly mentioned in only one quarter of the citations.     

Understanding Stress and Life Satisfaction for Children of Clergy: A Retrospective Study

Because clergy children live within a unique family context, the goal of this study was to examine the individual and family stressors that adult clergy children experience while growing up and how individual and family coping resources, along with the adult clergy children’s perceptions of their experiences or sense of coherence, have affected the perceived life satisfaction. The present study examined the life satisfaction of clergy and non-clergy children, both retrospectively as adolescents and currently as adults, to determine the stability of their perceived life satisfaction over time. Compared to a sample of adult non-clergy children, adult clergy children experienced greater levels of individual and family stress along with a lower sense of coherence and less life satisfaction as adolescents. A path analysis of the model based on family stress theory indicates that sense of coherence provided the greatest total effect on participants’ life satisfaction as adolescents, whereas life satisfaction as adolescents provided the greatest total effect on life satisfaction as adults. These findings provide several implications for research and practice.     

生命科学前沿的特征与意义

生命科学前沿是一个灰色系统和动态系统,随着其发展的演进,前沿领域与热点总处于动态或交替之中.通过对生命科学前沿领域的分析和界定,提出当今生命科学前沿领域的代表为基因组学、系统生物学等七大领域;并以科学系统论的观点分析七大前沿具有的系统特性和作为大科学的特点及意义.     

Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Experimental Practice in Medicine and the Life Sciences

The aim of this paper is to discuss a key question in the history and philosophy of medicine, namely how scholars should treat the practices and experimental hypotheses of modern life science laboratories. The paper seeks to introduce some prominent historiographical methods and theoretical approaches associated with biomedical research. Although medical scientists need no convincing that experimentation has a significant function in their laboratory work, historians, philosophers, and sociologists long neglected its importance when examining changes in medical theories or progress in scientific knowledge. The reason appears to have been the academic influence of the then dominant tradition in the history of ideas, but was also due to a misconception of what could usefully be termed the view on “historical ontology.” During the last two decades, there have been many books and research articles that have turned towards the subject, so that the study of experimental practice has become a major trend in the contemporary history and philosophy of medicine. A closer look at the issue of laboratory research shows that concepts in medicine and the life sciences cannot be understood as historically constant, free-standing ideas, but have to be regarded as dependent on local research settings. They often carry particular “social memories” with them and thus acquire important ethical implications.     

Possibilities, Intentions and Threats: Dual Use in the Life Sciences Reconsidered

Due to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the anthrax letters of a few weeks later, the concept of dual use has spread widely in the life sciences during the past decade. This article is aimed at a clarification of the dual use concept and its scope of application for the life sciences. Such a clarification would greatly facilitate the work of policymakers seeking to ensure security while avoiding undesirable interventions of government in the conduct of science. The article starts with an overview of the main developments in life sciences in relation to dual use. This is illustrated by discussions on synthetic biology and dual use. The findings lead to a reconsideration of the dual use concept. An area in need of further attention is to what extent threats and intentions should have impact on the definition of dual use. Possible threats are analyzed against the background of the phenomenon of securitization of health care and life sciences: considering these sectors of society in security terms. Some caveats that should be taken into account in a dual use policy are described. An acceptable, adequate and applicable definition of the dual use concept could help researchers, universities, companies and policy makers. Such a definition should build upon, but go beyond, the view developed in the influential Fink-report, which concentrates on the so-called ??experiments of concern??, e.g. experiments that enhance the virulence of pathogens (National Research Council of the National Academies 2004) It will be argued that??in addition to these more technical aspects??a definition of dual use should include the aspect of threats and intentions.     

Research Productivity and Performance of Journals in the Creativity Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis

A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze the research productivity and performance of creativity studies between 1965 and 2012. A dataset was constructed using all publications and citations retrieved from four key journals that publish creativity research: Journal of Creative Behavior (JCB), Gifted Child Quarterly (GCQ), Creativity Research Journal (CRJ), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (PACA). Major findings in this study include: (a) During the study period, the four journals have published 1,891 articles on creativity and they have been cited 11,709 times; (b) the impact factors of the four journals increased from lower than .50 in 2002 to over 1.0 in 2012; in 2012 PACA had the highest impact factor, followed by CRJ; (c) JCB published the most creativity papers and CRJ had the most citations; (d) about a third of the articles published in the four journals have never been cited. Implications for the field of creativity are discussed.     

Dual-Use Research Codes of Conduct: Lessons from the Life Sciences

This paper considers multiple meanings of the expression ‘dual use’ and examines lessons to be learned from the life sciences when considering ethical and policy issues associated with the dual-use nature of nanotechnology (and converging technologies). After examining recent controversial dual-use experiments in the life sciences, it considers the potential roles and limitations of science codes of conduct for addressing concerns associated with dual-use science and technology. It concludes that, rather than being essentially associated with voluntary self-governance of the scientific community, codes of conduct should arguably be part of a broader regulatory oversight system.     

Incidence of Data Duplications in a Randomly Selected Pool of Life Science Publications

Since the solution to many public health problems depends on research, it is critical for the progress and well-being for the patients that we can trust the scientific literature. Misconduct and poor laboratory practice in science threatens the scientific progress, leads to loss of productivity and increased healthcare costs, and endangers lives of patients. Data duplication may represent one of challenges related to these problems. In order to estimate the frequency of data duplication in life science literature, a systematic screen through 120 original scientific articles published in three different cancer related journals [journal impact factor (IF) <5, 5–10 and >20] was completed. The study revealed a surprisingly high proportion of articles containing data duplication. For the IF < 5 and IF > 20 journals, 25 % of the articles were found to contain data duplications. The IF 5–10 journal showed a comparable proportion (22.5 %). The proportion of articles containing duplicated data was comparable between the three journals and no significant correlation to journal IF was found. The editorial offices representing the journals included in this study and the individual authors of the detected articles were contacted to clarify the individual cases. The editorial offices did not reply and only 1 out of 29 cases were apparently clarified by the authors, although no supporting data was supplied. This study questions the reliability of life science literature, it illustrates that data duplications are widespread and independent of journal impact factor and call for a reform of the current peer review and retraction process of scientific publishing.